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RIP: Fred Howard

Posted Jul 3, 2014

Fred Howard, a member of Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning’s staff and head of chaplains for the Diocese of Long Island hospital ministry, died July 1 at his log cabin home in Hinsdale, Pennsylvania. He was 80. He had suffered several strokes and for the past year had been confined to a wheelchair. Fred had lived in Hinsdale, where he and his wife, Sylvia, intended to retire. She was also a member of the Episcopal Church Center staff and died in the late 1990s.

Fred was instrumental in securing permission from the various Anglican provinces for the startup of a churchwide communications system, which eventually morphed into the Internet.

I erred in naming Fred’s Pennsylvania town… it was Honesdale. I had recently spoken with him after a period in which my wife, Joan, also had died of cancer. Fred grieved for several years, during which the Episcopal congregation in Honesdale planted a “Sylvia tree” in her name. His sense of humor, always rife, filled his life and those who knew him. I remember his standing on a street corner in New York City, simply looking up at the skyscrapers; others would join him, and pretty soon there would be a crowd of perhaps twenty persons, standing with him, looking up in expectancy. He would emit a loud chuckle and walk off.